The Intelligence Office

by Nathaniel Hawthorne




Grave figure, with a pair of mysterious spectacles on his nose and a
pen behind his ear, was seated at a desk in the corner of a
metropolitan office. The apartment was fitted up with a counter, and
furnished with an oaken cabinet and a Chair or two, in simple and
business-like style. Around the walls were stuck advertisements of
articles lost, or articles wanted, or articles to be disposed of; in
one or another of which classes were comprehended nearly all the
Conveniences, or otherwise, that the imagination of man has contrived.
The interior of the room was thrown into shadow, partly by the tall
edifices that rose on the opposite side of the street, and partly by
the immense show-bills of blue and crimson paper that were expanded
over each of the three windows. Undisturbed by the tramp of feet, the
rattle of wheels, the hump of voices, the shout of the city crier, the
scream of the newsboys, and other tokens of the multitudinous life that
surged along in front of the office, the figure at the desk pored
diligently over a folio volume, of ledger-like size and aspect, He
looked like the spirit of a record—the soul of his own great volume
made visible in mortal shape.

But scarcely an instant elapsed without the appearance at the door of
some individual from the busy population whose vicinity was manifested
by so much buzz, and clatter, and outcry. Now, it was a thriving
mechanic in quest of a tenement that should come within his moderate
means of rent; now, a ruddy Irish girl from the banks of Killarney,
wandering from kitchen to kitchen of our land, while her heart still
hung in the peat-smoke of her native cottage; now, a single gentleman
looking out for economical board; and now—for this establishment
offered an epitome of worldly pursuits—it was a faded beauty inquiring
for her lost bloom; or Peter Schlemihl, for his lost shadow; or an
author of ten years’ standing, for his vanished reputation; or a moody
man, for yesterday’s sunshine.

At the next lifting of the latch there entered a person with his hat
awry upon his head, his clothes perversely ill-suited to his form, his
eyes staring in directions opposite to their intelligence, and a
certain odd unsuitableness pervading his whole figure. Wherever he
might chance to be, whether in palace or cottage, church or market, on
land or sea, or even at his own fireside, he must have worn the
characteristic expression of a man out of his right place.

“This,” inquired he, putting his question in the form of an
assertion,—“this is the Central Intelligence Office?”

“Even so,” answered the figure at the desk, turning another leaf of his
volume; he then looked the applicant in the face and said briefly,
“Your business?”

“I want,” said the latter, with tremulous earnestness, “a place!”

“A place! and of what nature?” asked the Intelligencer. “There are many
vacant, or soon to be so, some of which will probably suit, since they
range from that of a footman up to a seat at the council-board, or in
the cabinet, or a throne, or a presidential chair.”

The stranger stood pondering before the desk with an unquiet,
dissatisfied air,—a dull, vague pain of heart, expressed by a slight
contortion of the brow,—an earnestness of glance, that asked and
expected, yet continually wavered, as if distrusting. In short, he
evidently wanted, not in a physical or intellectual sense, but with an
urgent moral necessity that is the hardest of all things to satisfy,
since it knows not its own object.

“Ah, you mistake me!” said he at length, with a gesture of nervous
impatience. “Either of the places you mention, indeed, might answer my
purpose; or, more probably, none of them. I want my place! my own
place! my true place in the world! my proper sphere! my thing to do,
which Nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry,
and which I have vainly sought all my lifetime! Whether it be a
footman’s duty or a king’s is of little consequence, so it be naturally
mine. Can you help me here?”

“I will enter your application,” answered the Intelligencer, at the
same time writing a few lines in his volume. “But to undertake such a
business, I tell you frankly, is quite apart from the ground covered by
my official duties. Ask for something specific, and it may doubtless be
negotiated for you, on your compliance with the conditions. But were I
to go further, I should have the whole population of the city upon my
shoulders; since far the greater proportion of them are, more or less,
in your predicament.”

The applicant sank into a fit of despondency, and passed out of the
door without again lifting his eyes; and, if he died of the
disappointment, he was probably buried in the wrong tomb, inasmuch as
the fatality of such people never deserts them, and, whether alive or
dead, they are invariably out of place.

Almost immediately another foot was heard on the threshold. A youth
entered hastily, and threw a glance around the office to ascertain
whether the man of intelligence was alone. He then approached close to
the desk, blushed like a maiden, and seemed at a loss how to broach his
business.

“You come upon an affair of the heart,” said the official personage,
looking into him through his mysterious spectacles. “State it in as few
words as may be.”

“You are right,” replied the youth. “I have a heart to dispose of.”

“You seek an exchange?” said the Intelligencer. “Foolish youth, why not
be contented with your own?”

“Because,” exclaimed the young man, losing his embarrassment in a
passionate glow,—“because my heart burns me with an intolerable fire;
it tortures me all day long with yearnings for I know not what, and
feverish throbbings, and the pangs of a vague sorrow; and it awakens me
in the night-time with a quake, when there is nothing to be feared. I
cannot endure it any longer. It were wiser to throw away such a heart,
even if it brings me nothing in return.”

“O, very well,” said the man of office, making an entry in his volume.
“Your affair will be easily transacted. This species of brokerage makes
no inconsiderable part of my business; and there is always a large
assortment of the article to select from. Here, if I mistake not, comes
a pretty fair sample.”

Even as he spoke the door was gently and slowly thrust ajar, affording
a glimpse of the slender figure of a young girl, who, as she timidly
entered, seemed to bring the light and cheerfulness of the outer
atmosphere into the somewhat gloomy apartment. We know not her errand
there, nor can we reveal whether the young man gave up his heart into
her custody. If so, the arrangement was neither better nor worse than
in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, where the parallel sensibilities
of a similar age, importunate affections, and the easy satisfaction of
characters not deeply conscious of themselves, supply the place of any
profounder sympathy.

Not always, however, was the agency of the passions and affections an
office of so little trouble. It happened, rarely, indeed, in proportion
to the cases that came under an ordinary rule, but still it did happen,
that a heart was occasionally brought hither of such exquisite
material, so delicately attempered, and so curiously wrought, that no
other heart could be found to match it. It might almost be considered a
misfortune, in a worldly point of view, to be the possessor of such a
diamond of the purest water; since in any reasonable probability it
could only be exchanged for an ordinary pebble, or a bit of cunningly
manufactured glass, or, at least, for a jewel of native richness, but
ill-set, or with some fatal flaw, or an earthy vein running through its
central lustre. To choose another figure, it is sad that hearts which
have their wellspring in the infinite, and contain inexhaustible
sympathies, should ever be doomed to pour themselves into shallow
vessels, and thus lavish their rich affections on the ground. Strange
that the finer and deeper nature, whether in man or woman, while
possessed of every other delicate instinct, should so often lack that
most invaluable one of preserving itself front contamination with what
is of a baser kind! Sometimes, it is true, the spiritual fountain is
kept pure by a wisdom within itself, and sparkles into the light of
heaven without a stain from the earthy strata through which it had
gushed upward. And sometimes, even here on earth, the pure mingles with
the pure, and the inexhaustible is recompensed with the infinite. But
these miracles, though he should claim the credit of them, are far
beyond the scope of such a superficial agent in human affairs as the
figure in the mysterious spectacles.

Again the door was opened, admitting the bustle of the city with a
fresher reverberation into the Intelligence Office. Now entered a man
of woe-begone and downcast look; it was such an aspect as if he had
lost the very soul out of his body, and had traversed all the world
over, searching in the dust of the highways, and along the shady
footpaths, and beneath the leaves of the forest, and among the sands of
the sea-shore, in hopes to recover it again. He had bent an anxious
glance along the pavement of the street as he came hitherward; he
looked also in the angle of the doorstep, and upon the floor of the
room; and, finally, coming up to the Man of Intelligence, he gazed
through the inscrutable spectacles which the latter wore, as if the
lost treasure might be hidden within his eyes.

“I have lost—” he began; and then he paused.

“Yes,” said the Intelligencer, “I see that you have lost,—but what?”

“I have lost a precious jewel!” replied the unfortunate person, “the
like of which is not to be found among any prince’s treasures. While I
possessed it, the contemplation of it was my sole and sufficient
happiness. No price should have purchased it of me; but it has fallen
from my bosom where I wore it in my careless wanderings about the
city.”

After causing the stranger to describe the marks of his lost jewel, the
Intelligencer opened a drawer of the oaken cabinet which has been
mentioned as forming a part of the furniture of the room. Here were
deposited whatever articles had been picked up in the streets, until
the right owners should claim them. It was a strange and heterogeneous
collection. Not the least remarkable part of it was a great number of
wedding-rings, each one of which had been riveted upon the finger with
holy vows, and all the mystic potency that the most solemn rites could
attain, but had, nevertheless, proved too slippery for the wearer’s
vigilance. The gold of some was worn thin, betokening the attrition of
years of wedlock; others, glittering from the jeweller’s shop, must
have been lost within the honeymoon. There were ivory tablets, the
leaves scribbled over with sentiments that had been the deepest truths
of the writer’s earlier years, but which were now quite obliterated
from his memory. So scrupulously were articles preserved in this
depository, that not even withered flowers were rejected; white roses,
and blush-roses, and moss-roses, fit emblems of virgin purity and
shamefacedness, which bad been lost or flung away, and trampled into
the pollution of the streets; locks of hair,—the golden and the glossy
dark,—the long tresses of woman and the crisp curls of man, signified
that lovers were now and then so heedless of the faith intrusted to
them as to drop its symbol from the treasure-place of the bosom. Many
of these things were imbued with perfumes, and perhaps a sweet scent
had departed from the lives of their former possessors ever since they
had so wilfully or negligently lost them. Here were gold pencil-cases,
little ruby hearts with golden arrows through them, bosom-pins, pieces
of coin, and small articles of every description, comprising nearly all
that have been lost since a long time ago. Most of them, doubtless, had
a history and a meaning, if there were time to search it out and room
to tell it. Whoever has missed anything valuable, whether out of his
heart, mind, or pocket, would do well to make inquiry at the Central
Intelligence Office.

And in the corner of one of the drawers of the oaken cabinet, after
considerable research, was found a great pearl, looking like the soul
of celestial purity, congealed and polished.

“There is my jewel! my very pearl!” cried the stranger, almost beside
himself with rapture. “It is mine! Give it me this moment! or I shall
perish!”

“I perceive,” said the Man of Intelligence, examining it more closely,
“that this is the Pearl of Great Price!”

“The very same,” answered the stranger. “Judge, then, of my misery at
losing it out of my bosom! Restore it to me! I must not live without it
an instant to longer.”

“Pardon me,” rejoined the Intelligencer, calmly, “you ask what is
beyond my duty. This pearl, as you well know, is held upon a peculiar
tenure; and having once let it escape from your keeping, you have no
greater claim to it—nay, not so great—as any other person. I cannot
give it back.”

Nor could the entreaties of the miserable man—who saw before his eyes
the jewel of his life without the power to reclaim it—soften the heart
of this stern being, impassive to human sympathy, though exercising
such an apparent influence over human fortunes. Finally the loser of
the inestimable pearl clutched his hands among his hair, and ran madly
forth into the world, which was affrighted at his desperate looks.
There passed him on the doorstep a fashionable young gentleman, whose
business was to inquire for a damask rosebud, the gift of his
lady-love, which he had lost out of his buttonhole within a hour after
receiving it. So various were the errands of those who visited this
Central Office, where all human wishes seemed to be made known, and, so
far as destiny would allow, negotiated to their fulfilment.

The next that entered was a man beyond the middle age, bearing the look
of one who knew the world and his own course in it. He had just
alighted from a handsome private carriage, which had orders to wait in
the street while its owner transacted his business. This person came up
to the desk with a quick, determined step, and looked the Intelligencer
in the face with a resolute eye; though, at the same time, some secret
trouble gleamed from it in red and dusky light.

“I have an estate to dispose of,” said he, with a brevity that seemed
characteristic.

“Describe it,” said the Intelligencer.

The applicant proceeded to give the boundaries of his property, its
nature, comprising tillage, pasture, woodland, and pleasure-grounds, in
ample circuit; together with a mansion-house, in the construction of
which it had been his object to realize a castle in the air, hardening
its shadowy walls into granite, and rendering its visionary splendor
perceptible to the awakened eye. Judging from his description, it was
beautiful enough to vanish like a dream, yet substantial enough to
endure for centuries. He spoke, too, of the gorgeous furniture, the
refinements of upholstery, and all the luxurious artifices that
combined to render this a residence where life might flow onward in a
stream of golden days, undisturbed by the ruggedness which fate loves
to fling into it.

“I am a man of strong will,” said he, in conclusion; “and at my first
setting out in life, as a poor, unfriended youth, I resolved to make
myself the possessor of such a mansion and estate as this, together
with the abundant revenue necessary to uphold it. I have succeeded to
the extent of my utmost wish. And this is the estate which I have now
concluded to dispose of.”

“And your terms?” asked the Intelligencer, after taking down the
particulars with which the stranger had supplied him.

“Easy, abundantly easy!” answered the successful man, smiling, but with
a stern and almost frightful contraction of the brow, as if to quell an
inward pang. “I have been engaged in various sorts of business,—a
distiller, a trader to Africa, an East India merchant, a speculator in
the stocks,—and, in the course of these affairs, have contracted an
encumbrance of a certain nature. The purchaser of the estate shall
merely be required to assume this burden to himself.”

“I understand you,” said the Man of Intelligence, putting his pen
behind his ear. “I fear that no bargain can be negotiated on these
conditions. Very probably the next possessor may acquire the estate
with a similar encumbrance, but it will be of his own contracting, and
will not lighten your burden in the least.”

“And am I to live on,” fiercely exclaimed the stranger, “with the dirt
of these accursed acres and the granite of this infernal mansion
crushing down my soul? How, if I should turn the edifice into an
almshouse or a hospital, or tear it down and build a church?”

“You can at least make the experiment,” said the Intelligencer; “but
the whole matter is one which you must settle for yourself.”

The man of deplorable success withdrew, and got into his coach, which
rattled off lightly over the wooden pavements, though laden with the
weight of much land, a stately house, and ponderous heaps of gold, all
compressed into an evil conscience.

There now appeared many applicants for places; among the most
noteworthy of whom was a small, smoke-dried figure, who gave himself
out to be one of the bad spirits that had waited upon Dr. Faustus in
his laboratory. He pretended to show a certificate of character, which,
he averred, had been given him by that famous necromancer, and
countersigned by several masters whom he had subsequently served.

“I am afraid, my good friend,” observed the Intelligencer, “that your
chance of getting a service is but poor. Nowadays, men act the evil
spirit for themselves and their neighbors, and play the part more
effectually than ninety-nine out of a hundred of your fraternity.”

But, just as the poor fiend was assuming a vaporous consistency, being
about to vanish through the floor in sad disappointment and chagrin,
the editor of a political newspaper chanced to enter the office in
quest of a scribbler of party paragraphs. The former servant of Dr.
Faustus, with some misgivings as to his sufficiency of venom, was
allowed to try his hand in this capacity. Next appeared, likewise
seeking a service, the mysterious man in Red, who had aided Bonaparte
in his ascent to imperial power. He was examined as to his
qualifications by an aspiring politician, but finally rejected, as
lacking familiarity with the cunning tactics of the present day.

People continued to succeed each other with as much briskness as if
everybody turned aside, out of the roar and tumult of the city, to
record here some want, or superfluity, or desire. Some had goods or
possessions, of which they wished to negotiate the sale. A China
merchant had lost his health by a long residence in that wasting
climate. He very liberally offered his disease, and his wealth along
with it, to any physician who would rid him of both together. A soldier
offered his wreath of laurels for as good a leg as that which it had
cost him on the battle-field. One poor weary wretch desired nothing but
to be accommodated with any creditable method of laying down his life;
for misfortune and pecuniary troubles had so subdued his spirits that
he could no longer conceive the possibility of happiness, nor had the
heart to try for it. Nevertheless, happening to, overhear some
conversation in the Intelligence Office respecting wealth to be rapidly
accumulated by a certain mode of speculation, he resolved to live out
this one other experiment of better fortune. Many persons desired to
exchange their youthful vices for others better suited to the gravity
of advancing age; a few, we are glad to say, made earnest, efforts to
exchange vice for virtue, and, hard as the bargain was, succeeded in
effecting it. But it was remarkable that what all were the least
willing to give up, even on the most advantageous terms, were the
habits, the oddities, the characteristic traits, the little ridiculous
indulgences, somewhere between faults and follies, of which nobody but
themselves could understand the fascination.

The great folio, in which the Man of Intelligence recorded all these
freaks of idle hearts, and aspirations of deep hearts, and desperate
longings of miserable hearts, and evil prayers of perverted hearts,
would be curious reading were it possible to obtain it for publication.
Human character in its individual developments-human nature in the
mass—may best be studied in its wishes; and this was the record of them
all. There was an endless diversity of mode and circumstance, yet
withal such a similarity in the real groundwork, that any one page of
the volume-whether written in the days before the Flood, or the
yesterday that is just gone by, or to be written on the morrow that is
close at hand, or a thousand ages hence—might serve as a specimen of
the whole. Not but that there were wild sallies of fantasy that could
scarcely occur to more than one man’s brain, whether reasonable or
lunatic. The strangest wishes—yet most incident to men who had gone
deep into scientific pursuits, and attained a high intellectual stage,
though not the loftiest—were, to contend with Nature, and wrest from
her some secret, or some power, which she had seen fit to withhold from
mortal grasp. She loves to delude her aspiring students, and mock them
with mysteries that seem but just beyond their utmost reach. To concoct
new minerals, to produce new forms of vegetable life, to create an
insect, if nothing higher in the living scale, is a sort of wish that
has often revelled in the breast of a man of science. An astronomer,
who lived far more among the distant worlds of space than in this lower
sphere, recorded a wish to behold the opposite side of the moon, which,
unless the system of the firmament be reversed, she can never turn
towards the earth. On the same page of the volume was written the wish
of a little child to have the stars for playthings.

The most ordinary wish, that was written down with wearisome
recurrence, was, of course, for wealth, wealth, wealth, in sums from a
few shillings up to unreckonable thousands. But in reality this
often-repeated expression covered as many different desires. Wealth is
the golden essence of the outward world, embodying almost everything
that exists beyond the limits of the soul; and therefore it is the
natural yearning for the life in the midst of which we find ourselves,
and of which gold is the condition of enjoyment, that men abridge into
this general wish. Here and there, it is true, the volume testified to
some heart so perverted as to desire gold for its own sake. Many wished
for power; a strange desire indeed, since it is but another form of
slavery. Old people wished for the delights of youth; a fop for a
fashionable coat; an idle reader, for a new novel; a versifier, for a
rhyme to some stubborn word; a painter, for Titian’s secret of
coloring; a prince, for a cottage; a republican, for a kingdom and a
palace; a libertine, for his neighbor’s wife; a man of palate, for
green peas; and a poor man, for a crust of bread. The ambitious desires
of public men, elsewhere so craftily concealed, were here expressed
openly and boldly, side by side with the unselfish wishes of the
philanthropist for the welfare of the race, so beautiful, so
comforting, in contrast with the egotism that continually weighed self
against the world. Into the darker secrets of the Book of Wishes we
will not penetrate.

It would be an instructive employment for a student of mankind,
perusing this volume carefully and comparing its records with men’s
perfected designs, as expressed in their deeds and daily life, to
ascertain how far the one accorded with the other. Undoubtedly, in most
cases, the correspondence would be found remote. The holy and generous
wish, that rises like incense from a pure heart towards heaven, often
lavishes its sweet perfume on the blast of evil times. The foul,
selfish, murderous wish, that steams forth from a corrupted heart,
often passes into the spiritual atmosphere without being concreted into
an earthly deed. Yet this volume is probably truer, as a representation
of the human heart, than is the living drama of action as it evolves
around us. There is more of good and more of evil in it; more redeeming
points of the bad and more errors of the virtuous; higher upsoarings,
and baser degradation of the soul; in short, a more perplexing
amalgamation of vice and virtue than we witness in the outward world.
Decency and external conscience often produce a far fairer outside than
is warranted by the stains within. And be it owned, oil the other hand,
that a man seldom repeats to his nearest friend, any more than he
realizes in act, the purest wishes, which, at some blessed time or
other, have arisen from the depths of his nature and witnessed for him
in this volume. Yet there is enough on every leaf to make the good man
shudder for his own wild and idle wishes, as well as for the sinner,
whose whole life is the incarnation of a wicked desire.

But again the door is opened, and we hear the tumultuous stir of the
world,—a deep and awful sound, expressing in another form some portion
of what is written in the volume that lies before the Man of
Intelligence. A grandfatherly personage tottered hastily into the
office, with such an earnestness in his infirm alacrity that his white
hair floated backward as he hurried up to the desk, while his dim eyes
caught a momentary lustre from his vehemence of purpose. This venerable
figure explained that he was in search of To-morrow.

“I have spent all my life in pursuit of it,” added the sage old
gentleman, “being assured that To-morrow has some vast benefit or other
in store for me. But I am now getting a little in years, and must make
haste; for, unless I overtake To-morrow soon, I begin to be afraid it
will finally escape me.”

“This fugitive To-morrow, my venerable friend,” said the Man of
Intelligence, “is a stray child of Time, and is flying from his father
into the region of the infinite. Continue your pursuit, and you will
doubtless come up with him; but as to the earthly gifts which you
expect, he has scattered them all among a throng of Yesterdays.”

Obliged to content himself with this enigmatical response, the
grandsire hastened forth with a quick clatter of his staff upon the
floor; and, as he disappeared, a little boy scampered through the door
in chase of a butterfly which had got astray amid the barren sunshine
of the city. Had the old gentleman been shrewder, he might have
detected To-morrow under the semblance of that gaudy insect. The golden
butterfly glistened through the shadowy apartment, and brushed its
wings against the Book of Wishes, and fluttered forth again with the
child still in pursuit.

A man now entered, in neglected attire, with the aspect of a thinker,
but somewhat too rough-hewn and brawny for a scholar. His face was full
of sturdy vigor, with some finer and keener attribute beneath. Though
harsh at first, it was tempered with the glow of a large, warm heart,
which had force enough to heat his powerful intellect through and
through. He advanced to the Intelligencer and looked at him with a
glance of such stern sincerity that perhaps few secrets were beyond its
scope.

“I seek for Truth,” said he.

“It is precisely the most rare pursuit that has ever come under my
cognizance,” replied the Intelligencer, as he made the new inscription
in his volume. “Most men seek to impose some cunning falsehood upon
themselves for truth. But I can lend no help to your researches. You
must achieve the miracle for yourself. At some fortunate moment you may
find Truth at your side, or perhaps she may be mistily discerned far in
advance, or possibly behind you.”

“Not behind me,” said the seeker; “for I have left nothing on my track
without a thorough investigation. She flits before me, passing now
through a naked solitude, and now mingling with the throng of a popular
assembly, and now writing with the pen of a French philosopher, and now
standing at the altar of an old cathedral, in the guise of a Catholic
priest, performing the high mass. O weary search! But I must not
falter; and surely my heart-deep quest of Truth shall avail at last.”

He paused and fixed his eyes upon the Intelligencer with a depth of
investigation that seemed to hold commerce with the inner nature of
this being, wholly regardless of his external development.

“And what are you?” said he. “It will not satisfy me to point to this
fantastic show of an Intelligence Office and this mockery of business.
Tell me what is beneath it, and what your real agency in life and your
influence upon mankind.”

“Yours is a mind,” answered the Man of Intelligence, “before which the
forms and fantasies that conceal the inner idea from the multitude
vanish at once and leave the naked reality beneath. Know, then, the
secret. My agency in worldly action, my connection with the press, and
tumult, and intermingling, and development of human affairs, is merely
delusive. The desire of man’s heart does for him whatever I seem to do.
I am no minister of action, but the Recording Spirit.”

What further secrets were then spoken remains a mystery, inasmuch as
the roar of the city, the bustle of human business, the outcry of the
jostling masses, the rush and tumult of man’s life, in its noisy and
brief career, arose so high that it drowned the words of these two
talkers; and whether they stood talking in the moon, or in Vanity Fair,
or in a city of this actual world, is more than I can say.